DistillateurQc

low concentration caustic solution, about 2%. How do you clean your copper still?

Yes we use caustic.

Hi guys, At our distillery, we clean our still first with caustic soda, and then a weak citric acid solution. We clean our still with this technique before each spirit run. How often you guys clean your still with the citric acid solution? Thanks!

Hi guys, At our distillery, we clean our still first with caustic soda, and then a weak citric acid solution. We clean our still with this technique before each spirit run. How often you guys clean your still with the citric acid solution? Thanks!

Hello, Yesterday, one of our fermenter overflowed. There was beer all over the place. The overflow comed out from the air tube. Any tips to avoid this? Using antifoam in the fermenter maybe? thx

Ok. Yes, this seems to be great ideas. We will look into this. Thank you very much, Math

About 635 gallons for mashing. When cleaning, let say 200 gallons.

Thank you Southern. Yes we use our well water to clean and make mash. But our well flowrate is too low. We have water tank that slowly fill up with well water that we use as reserve. Because if we use well water to cool our condensers, well will dry up before the end of the run. So we need a closed loop for our condensers.....

Hello, our tap water is around 50 F. We cant use it for cooling because we are on a well that has a low debit. We must conserve water as much as possible. This is why we need closed loop system for cooling. For our still, coolant input temp is about 60 F and the flowrate is about 10 GPM. Dont know about the coolant output temp...... Our condenser ( for 635 gallons stripping still) will be a tube exchanger, with thoses caractéristics: 1.Material: Stainless steel 304; 2.Structure: tube type heat exchanger 3.Inner diameter:Ø1'2";height of body=6'; 4.Thickness: 1/8" The condenser of our vodka still is similar. The condenser of our gin still is smaller, let say 1' diameter x 5' height. For the fermenter, it will about 3 feet diameter by 8 feet high, no agitator. The jacket coverage area are about 80 sq.ft. Will be producing whiskey, gin, vodka. Will be producing spirit from barley, wheat. We mash at +/- 145F for an hour, ferment at +/- 82F for 3-4 days. Still run time doing vodka is about 8-9 hours. Thank you Souther. Mat

Hello fellows distillers, We are a small craft distillery and now we have an expansion project. We need advice on the best cooling system to install after expansion. The planned setup after expansion is the following: 1x 160 gallons vodka still with 21 plates columns 1x 80 gallons gin still 1x 635 gallons stripping still. 1x 635 gallons mash/lauter tun 3x 635 gallons fermenters We currently own a Kreyer Chilly max 90 chiller (https://www.gwkent.com/media/pdf/product/3942/Chilly_Max_90_eng.pdf) connected to a plate exchanger (https://www.gwkent.com/heat-exchanger.html 6 square meter) that is connected to a 660 gallons cold water tank. Obviously, with our new setup, we will need more cooling capacity. We were thinking about keeping our Chilly max 90 to cool down our mash (will be cooling one at the time, with the fermenter jacket). Will it be enough powerful? We were thinking about buying a new chiller for the stills operation (condenser & dephleg). What chiller size do we need (HP, tons or KW of cooling capacity), considering that we would like to run the three stills at the same time? Is it possible to eliminate the cold water tank (to save space) and run glycol directly from our chiller to our condensers/dephleg? Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mat

Hi fellows, I have a simple question I was not able to find an answer on google. We run a 600L vodka still. The water flowrate to the condenser of the still is about 8 gallons/minute. Usually, we use water that is around 50 F for the condenser. I want to know what is the hottest water temperature we can use in our condenser before we start to lose alcohol vapor that will not condensate? Thank you.

Yes large helmet. Thank you

This is for the production of gin.

Hi fellow distillers, We have a vodka still with a whisky column (5 plates)and a vodka column (21 plates). When we make our low wines, we use the whisky column and bypass the vodka column. Should we bypass the whisky column also? So the run will be shorter. Will it affect the yield or final product? We usually make our low wine run with no cuts, and run it down until it reach 10 abv. Final low wines are at 45 abv. Any thought? Any advice? Thanks to all.

Thank you MGL. Our ativated carbon is in bulk. How should we proceed? Make a pocket of carbon and proceed our spirit through it? Merci.